Whistle, fellah, if you spot a cop!
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*Vienna’s famous amusement park
Sunset in the Prater
They sat for hours in the Grabenkiosk* on the last day of August, watched fiakers† roll by with foreigners in the passenger seats, automobiles like migrating birds returning from distant trips, ladies on the trottoir gliding by with astonishing self-assurance and others that pattered and pranced about to puff themselves up into something special.
At the Kiosk sat a French woman whom one dared greet only with one’s eyes. And a sweet young thing with her “aunt,” whom one likewise saluted with the eyes alone. And unfamiliar damsels with veiled hats whom one did not greet at all. And a few men who’d already returned from their vacations. All these people felt a little déclassé to have been spotted at the Grabenkiosk in the high season, while the others were still basking in Ostende or Biarritz—.
Notwithstanding all this, the two friends made a few salient observations, gathered a few rare examples of the little species of man for their internal bug collection, pinned them up and arranged them in generalized categories.
At 6 P.M. the red automobile, Mercedes 18–24, came by and drove them off to the Krieau.†† There they found an altogether dust-free country air and quiet. A man in a black suit and snow-white gloves mounted a horse. A fiaker brought a dancer (the Imperial Opera had just opened), a gray automobile drove up, muffled engine, roaring in a baritone, more than 30 horsepower. The little garden was full of yellow flowers that looked like little sunflowers and the rabbits in their cages pricked up their ears at an irregular slant. The two friends smoked Prinzesas and gaped at the mostly empty white tables and benches. In early spring and fall the place gets really hopping. But it was only August 31!
So the two friends drove on to the winter embankment.
Danube, small track, big leather factory, wobbly granite pavement, good enough for the wide-tired truck rolling along at a snail’s pace! But the automobile leapt, galloped, hopped, like a déclassé vehicle on this paved truck road. To the left lay the winter embankment, to the right a raised plateau made of sand and gravel dug out of the Danube studded with young birch trees. From there one had a panoramic view of blue-gray hills, black factory chimneys and the glow of the sunset. In the distance reared the somber dynamite depot, the Laaerberg, the Central Cemetery, the Kahlenberg—. The dark red blaze of the striped sunset surged against the gray molten lead-colored sky and earth. The leather factory reared up like a black beast, and three massive chimneys sent black smoke into the blaze like little spurts of steam that would like to put out giant fires! The slender delicate young birch trees in the Danube landfill trembled in the evening wind and the two friends picked out lovely smooth light brown pebbles as souvenirs of the pleasant evening. Back on the highway waited the red automobile, Mercedes 18–24, which, in fourth gear could rip along like a little road-running Orient Express.
The red blaze against the leaden sky turned raspberry colored, then dark gray-red. The two friends remarked: “Now there’s nothing more to see. The play is over.” So they climbed into the red automobile and said to the chauffeur: “Fourth gear, please—.”
They whizzed back to the Grabenkiosk.
Still seated there was the French lady whom one only dared greet with one’s eyes.
But at this late hour one felt entitled to say “Good evening—.”
And the two gentlemen politely bid her: “Bon soir—.”
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*The Café-pavilion “Am Graben”
†Horse-drawn hacks
††A trotting race track in the Prater
The Night
The night won’t pass. Naturally you keep dwelling all the while on each and every one of your thousand unnecessary sins. Nevertheless or precisely for that very reason, the night won’t pass. How foolishly you lived, or rather, failed to live, actually just slid by, dying a little every day. You’ve got no Bismarck-brain, never took yourself in hand, failed to fulfill man’s sole true purpose! A thousand things drove you from yourself, robbed you of your innate, indwelling vitality, drove you away from the best of your self!
That’s why the night won’t pass.
Because the sum total of your dumb and unnecessary sins is staggering.
Did you really have to that time?! No, you didn’t have to at all, especially not in this altogether perilous affair! So why did you go and do it?! So that this neverending night would afford you the human occasion to keep remembering and, as it were, dredging up your stony life of sin, and so that it would keep tormenting you for not having been enough of a man throughout this long preciously petrifying period of your life!
That’s why your night won’t pass!
Sanatorium for the Mentally Imbalanced
(but not the one in which I wiled!)
Morning consultation.
The doctor is seated, like a district attorney, behind a massive desk, with a serious, searching look on his face.
The delinquent (patient) enters.
“Please, have a seat—.”
Pause, during which the district attorney (doctor) studies the criminal to ascertain any sign of paralysis or simulation—.
“Now then, my dear Peter Altenberg, seeing as I’ve known you for quite some time now through your interesting books, I take the liberty of dispensing with the conventional title ‘Sir’ in the case of a famous person like yourself. Apropos of which, I understand your female admirers address you directly with the initials ‘P.A’!? I dare not as of yet permit myself that honorific abbreviation—.
“But let’s get down to business! So, my dear Peter Altenberg, what are we going to have for breakfast?!”
“We?! That I can’t tell you. But I myself take coffee, a light coffee with plenty of milk—.”
“Coffee?! Is that so?! Coffee be it then, light coffee with plenty of milk—?!? Coffee, if you please—!”
“Yes, please, it’s my regular morning drink, to which I’ve been accustomed for thirty years now—.”
“Very well then. But you are here, in fact, to disabuse yourself of your previous lifestyle, which does not appear to have done you much good, and, more importantly, you are here to acquire the necessary energy to at least attempt to gradually undertake such salubrious changes in your heretofore accustomed, indeed perhaps all too accustomed, lifestyle!?! So, for the moment at least, let’s stick with coffee with milk. But why such a pronounced aversion to tea?! One can also sip one’s tea diluted with milk—?!”
“Yes, but I prefer to drink coffee with milk—.”
“Do you, Mr. Altenberg, have a particular reason for deeming the satisfaction of a morning tea as insufficiently bracing for your nerves?!?”
“Yes, because I don’t like the taste of it—.”
“Aha, that’s just what I wanted to establish. Now then, my dear sir, what do you have with your beloved and seemingly indispensable morning coffee with milk?!?”
“With it?! Nothing!”
“But you must have something solid with it! Coffee on an empty stomach doesn’t taste good—.”
“No, I have nothing with it; all I like is coffee with milk plain and simple—.”
“Well, my dear Sir, with all due respect, that just won’t do here. I’m afraid you’ll have to concede two rolls with butter—.”
“I loathe butter, I loathe rolls, but even more so I loathe buttered rolls!”
“We’ll neutralize that aversion in due time! I’ve brought off far more difficult feats, I assure you, my friend—. So, and now you will be so good as to quietly betake yourself to your breakfast on the veranda. One more thing: Do you customarily rest after breakfast?”